When the poet Miguel Teurbe Tolón's wife, sewed the first flag of Cuba,[1] Villaverde helped settle upon the final design: two white stripes, three blue, a red triangle, and a lone star.

His first works were published in a magazine with the lengthy name Miscelánea, de útil y agradable recreo (Miscellaneous Useful and Agreeable Recreations).

Beginning in 1840, he became an advocate of Cuban independence from Spain and worked as a secretary to General Narciso López, who later undertook two futile invasion attempts to liberate Cuba.

In 1848, before that occurred, Villaverde was arrested by Spanish soldiers in his own home but, the following year, successfully arranged his escape and fled to the United States and settled in New York, where he was politically active; working as the editor and publisher of some Cuban exile magazines, including La Verdad and El Independiente.

In 2008, Cuban writer Daína Chaviano paid tribute to Villaverde in her novel The Island of Eternal Love (Riverhead Press), where he appears as one of the characters.